It should be painful to be stupid

There is a reason we call wild animals, ‘wild animals.’ Wild animals are unpredictable and capable of causing great injury and even death. People always seem to want to defy the odds by either keeping wild animals as pets or invading the space of wild animals in nature.

Sometimes the animals fight back. There are signs all over Yellowstone National Park warning visitors not to go near the buffalo and other wild animals. (the signs about the grizzlies are particularly stern.) However, I have personally watched far too many people fail to heed the warnings. Why would anyone approach a beast that is just huge? Buffalo make cattle look like wimps. This buffalo showed these people who was the boss, with attitude.

Again, it should be painful to be stupid. We need a break in here from politics. Don’t forget to give to your national parks if you have any spare change. National Parks have been hit hard by this economy and belt-tightening. They also suffered under the Bush Administration.

Hah, marinm!! There are some Indian kids up in South Dakota and Montana I know about who would probably view this video and wonder just how in the Hell their ancestors managed to lose their lands to dummies like that pair!!

@Wolverine: No kidding. Seriously, when I was out there last we saw people defying the park rangers, getting out of their cars when the buffalo were crossing the road, (with much attitude!) and getting right up in their faces to get a better picture. What morons. I was real glad I didn’t see a goring.

I had a close call with a leopard while in Africa recently – from horseback!. This is from my blog:

After six hours in the saddle, we (10 riders) were nearing our camp, and everyone was exhausted. One of the guests, a young girl from Switzerland, said she saw a “cat”. I also heard something feline-sounding, and my horse, Frankie, was agitated. I thought maybe a lynx was nearby. Then one of the guides says there is a leopard nearby and it had a kill. One of the guests, a woman from Capetown, takes off on her horse to get a look, but the guides stopped her. They told us to ride together and maybe we would all see it. The area was covered in bushes and so it was difficult to see.

I was riding toward one of the guides when, about 20 feet in front of me, uphill, in my 11 o’clock position comes an enormous “ROOOOAR”! All the horses bolted, including mine, and I’ll never forget the look of terror on Frank’s face (I probably looked just as scared). Fortunately nobody was thrown off. I managed to calm mine down, even though my heart was racing. I never heard anything so ferocious and angry-sounding! You don’t just hear it, you feel the vibrations, which I could almost see bouncing off my horse’s head. I hadn’t yet see the leopard though.

We backed off a bit and the guide told us to ride in a cluster, so we did. We were making sort of a half-moon when I spotted the thing on the ground, dragging a dead impala it must have just killed. She was big, and looked like an orange ball of rage! She was quite beautiful. There were a group of impalas nearby, and strangely, they were looking at the leopard too, like rubber-necking commuters might do at an accident scene.

The guides lost the leopard after that, and although it was still nearby, the guides told us to back away, as it’s not a good idea, for obvious reasons, to be poking around the bushes looking for a leopard you can’t find.. We walked away towards our camp. Later in the evening, we took a vehicle game drive and saw what we are pretty sure was this leopard’s baby up in some rocks. The mama was probably dragging the impala back to her baby, although we didn’t see her around.

Extremely neat experience, Starry. Did you take an excursion safari? Was it to see game?

Tell us more and thanks for sharing that harrowing experience. I would have been terrified. I have been on one runaway horse. No leopards, just 2 old geldings thinking one was going to get ahead of the other…but it was still scary.